LAST WORD FOR 2020
We are just finishing up the final few jobs in the final days of trading for us in 2020 and looking forward to some family time with our sons over Christmas and the New Year. The workshop will close promptly (we hope) at 12noon on Saturday 19th December – the plan at the moment is to reopen to customers on Tuesday 12th January 2021. But as always, we will be guided by Government rules and regulations, so if those change between now and then, so will our plans. We will update on here and on our social media (Instagram and Facebook) with the very latest if more changes are announced.
A huge thank you to all our customers throughout 2020 – your patience, understanding and support during a turbulent year has been much appreciated. We are looking forward to the challenges of 2021.
From our family to yours, may we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and healthy New Year
All the very best to you from Alec and Jo
DECEMBER 2020
The National Lockdown ends on 1st December, allowing us to reopen to customers from Wednesday 2nd December. We have been very busy during the lockdown, completing many of our existing orders and operating a Click and Collect system to get finished work back to customers. We’re glad that we can now allow people back inside as it felt very odd having to pass frames through the doorway and ask people to stand outside in all weathers. Luckily the rain held off most days!
Our huge thanks to all our customers for your patience and understanding as we negotiated the new rules and regulations. From now until our Christmas break, we will continue with our appointment system with our core times available from 10am to 4pm Tuesday to Friday and 9am to 12noon on Saturdays. With the last few busy weeks of the year ahead we are going to be flexible with our opening hours. We are going to be working longer hours, so we can arrange appointments into the early evening and into the afternoon on Saturdays. Please just give us a call to arrange this.
To add to the hiccups of 2020, our Facebook page appointment system has stopped working properly, so we have had to remove it. We are getting an alternative booking system organised and will have that available through our website in the New Year. In the meantime, if you would like to book a Design or Collection appointment please do just get in touch – by phone, email, text or Facebook message.
Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has taken time to support us with a Review on Facebook, Google or TrustPilot. These really do make such a difference, not only for us to read (which is always lovely) but also when other people are searching for us online.
2020 has been a year like no other for all of us and for so many around the world. As a trading year it is definitely one to throw financial trends and year on year comparisons into disarray! But is has also been a year of learning more about ourselves and our business. We’ve been so grateful for the kindness and support we have received from so many people this year. So from our family to yours we wish you all a safe and healthy Christmas and New Year. A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. Alec & Jo
NOVEMBER 2020
As you will be aware, in England we are now entering the second national lockdown. As we are classified as a non-essential business we are having to close our doors from Thursday 5th November through to Wednesday 2nd December inclusive. But we will be here Monday to Friday and working away in the background to finish our current forward orders. If you have an order in with us at the moment, please just bear with us as we continue to deal with interrupted supply chains and delays in deliveries. We are doing our best to keep on top of it all at the moment and your patience and understanding is much appreciated. As we complete orders we will be in touch to arrange to get the finished work back to you as soon as possible. We will have Click & Collect appointments available Monday to Friday, with evening appointments available on at least 2 days every week. We will also be available for virtual design appointments through lockdown, so if this is something you would like to do then please give us a call and we can arrange that. To limit the number of days we are travelling from home to work during lockdown, we will not be available on Saturdays, but will revert to our normal Tuesday to Saturday appointment hours once the restrictions are lifted.
This year is definitely one of needing to adapt to change, sometimes at very short notice. We hope that the restrictions are lifted in early December and we can trade as normal through until our Christmas break.
SEPTEMBER 2020
Update: 22nd September 2020 – In light of the Government’s announcement today, we will now be wearing masks at all times when customers are on the premises. We would remind customers that it is a requirement for face coverings when visiting retail premises unless you hold a medical exemption. We have disposable masks available for any customer to have if you forget to bring a mask with you. This is in addition to the strategies and procedures we already have in place to keep us all COVID safe.
We remain on an appointment only system at the moment and until Government guidelines change we will stay with this system. We know that it can sometimes be difficult to get a quick appointment time and we are sorry if this has caused annoyance or inconvenience. But to maintain safe social distancing we are only able to serve one customer/household bubble at a time, instead of both of us able to help customers at the same time, so this has by necessity halved our availability. We’d like to thank all our customers for your support over the past few months as well as your patience and understanding as we return to some semblance of normality.
Like many industries, the supply chain for the framing industry has been hit by the Pandemic. Many of our supplies come from Italy, Spain and the USA – all of which have been hard hit by the virus causing production delays. We have seen an increased number of mouldings and mountboard colours being discontinued this year, compared to normal. Supply chains have also been interrupted and disrupted and so we’ve had the knock on effect of having to wait longer for deliveries and more out of stock mouldings with longer lead times before they are restocked. We are working hard to source supplies from different suppliers to bridge the gaps and reduce delays where we can. In addition, work coming in for framing is at a very high level across the industry and so our own work lead times have had to be temporarily extended to allow us to catch up. We hopefully will start to be back to normal lead times in the coming months as this initial rush after lockdown reduces back to more typical work levels.
You can book a design or collection appointment with us in a variety of ways. The quickest and easiest is via our Facebook page which shows all availability. Or you can call us on 01626 888669 during working hours or email us enquiries@theframinglot.co.uk and we will get back to you. If you call or email please just let us know what day of the week and am or pm would suit you best.
We’ve seen so many fantastic projects and such beautiful artwork being brought in since lockdown was lifted. We feature some of it on our Facebook and Instagram pages if you’d like to view it or Like or Follow our page.
We will be back with more news next month. Alec and Jo
JULY 2020
We hope everyone is safe and well. Following Government advice we have been operating our appointment system since we reopened after lockdown back in June. This has been going well and we’d like to thank everyone for their understanding and patience as things start to get back to normal. Supplies have been a bit hit and miss over the past few weeks, but they are slowly getting into a steadier routine. Again, thank you for your patience if you’ve had to wait slightly longer than normal. We are doing our best to keep as up to date as possible. As from Friday 24th July the new rules are that masks must be worn when visiting retail premises. Guidelines are that retail staff do not have to wear masks, but we have them here and so if you’d prefer us to wear one then please just let us know when you arrive. We continue to be very careful about sanitising surfaces between customer visits and our design desk is 2m wide which is ideal for social distancing. We are taking the health and safety of ourselves and our customers very seriously.
It has been great to see so many customers since reopening on the 16th June and all the wonderful and beautiful artwork that you have been acquiring during lockdown. It has been great to get our design heads back in full swing framing it all.
A reminder that the workshop will be closed for one week at the end of the month from Monday 27th July, reopening on Tuesday 4th August.
JUNE 2020
We are delighted to say that the Government has confirmed that we can reopen the workshop to customers from Tuesday 16th June. We’ve undertaken a full risk assessment, following the Government Guidelines at all times and we’ve introduced a number of strategies to keep ourselves and our customers as safe as we possibly can. We will be operating an appointment only system for the foreseeable future which helps us manage the number of people in the building at any one time. Appointments can be booked via phone, email or directly on our Facebook page – and times vary from 15 minutes for a quick collection, through to one hour for a design process. If you need more help with any of that then please just get in touch. Please do check out our COVID-19 page for full information – we have also produced a “walk through video” that you can find on our Facebook page to show you how our new systems will work.
We’ve been keeping busy over the past few months completing orders we had in before the lockdown as well as a thorough spring clean at the workshop. We’ve even painted our front doors and a huge thanks to our sons Matthew and Harry for their help with that. Jo has been kept busy with her Fine Art Trade Guild responsibilities and she was also asked to write and present two Webinars in an eight part series for the UK’s largest framing supplies company – the first on working at the design desk and the second on advice, help and guidance for reopening your framing business. This was viewed live by other framers around the UK and Ireland and is also available for others to view at a later date via their website.
Finally we’d like to thank all our customers for their patience, understanding and support during this pandemic. It has been a very strange year for everyone and we are so glad that we are now in a position where we can start working again, even if the day to day reality will be quite different to what we have been used to. This month, on the 26th, we celebrate 14 years of The Framing Lot. At this time of year we usually reflect on how our business has grown and changed over that time. But what this year has really shown us is that no-one can predict what is around the corner or how things will be. All we can do is go with what life throws at us, and make the best of it that we can. The strength of having those 14 years behind us, is that as a business we have managed to weather this storm and come out the other side ready for new challenges. Both of us will continue to do our best to provide the very best customer service we can – and we look forward to reconnecting with our customers over the coming months. Do please all take care and stay safe.
MAY 2020
We are now looking towards the time when we can hopefully reopen again. Government Guidelines have changed as of 25th May and we are now looking at doing kerbside only collections from Tuesday 9th June with the workshop fully reopening with our new appointment system from Tuesday 16th June. We have created a COVID-19 page in our website menu where we have put all the latest information and some FAQs. Please check that out for our latest news. Thank you.
TEMPORARY CLOSURE – COVID-19 UPDATE
Following the Government announcement on 23 March, we have closed our workshop until the current restrictions are lifted. This is to protect our customers and ourselves. We thank you for your patience and understanding during this time. Any updates will be announced on our social media channels – Facebook and Instagram @theframinglot and we look forward to seeing you again soon, when normal life resumes. Alec and Jo #StaySafe #StayHome #HelpTheNHS #FlattenTheCurve
March 2020
Our last update in January seems a world away from where we all are now. COVID-19 was something on the news, but not yet here in the UK. How times have changed. In line with many other businesses we are still open and working, and making sure that we take sensible and thorough precautions around sanitising surfaces in the workshop. We make sure to clean down the customer area and door handles after each customer visit and we have a strict routine of hand-washing and using hand sanitiser during the day. We are doing our best to keep our customers and ourselves safe and well. In addition, any elderly or vulnerable customers who need to self-isolate will be offered free delivery of their order once it is completed. We will be in touch with them individually to arrange this. Alterntiavely if you’d prefer to wait in the car and for us to bring your completed framing out to you, we’re happy to do this – we can take payment over the phone or if you use internet banking you can pay us direct. Just give us a call from outside and we will pop out to see you. We do ask that if you have recently returned from abroad or have been advised to quarrantine or self-isolate then you don’t visit the workshop. Our stocks and supply levels are excellent and our suppliers have confirmed that they are still working as normal at the moment. If anything changes we will make sure to post on here, but for now it is very much business as close to normal as we can make it.
But life isn’t all about COVID-19, as much as it can seem that way from the News. Our Landlord is currently cladding our building and it is beginning to look very smart, we’re hoping that will be finished in the next few weeks. During the work our car parking spaces are sometimes breifly out of use, but there are still plenty of places to park up and our spaces nearest the road are unaffected. We’ve also taken the opportunity to have our new signs installed. Very smartly produced by Swiftprint in Dawlish, they feature our new logo and up to date contact information and qualifications. When our very first sign was made for us 14 years ago we didn’t even have a website! How times change. We’ve moved our qualification certificates up into their new position on the wall and installed a screen so we can show a slideshow of work completed and methods we use when we do your framing. We’re getting a new selection of Ready Made Frames soon, but this has been delayed slightly by external events. The workshop remains nice and busy with an increase in military memorabilia over the past few weeks and months. Just a reminder that we are closed for the four day Easter weekend. We will do another update very soon. We hope everyone stays safe and well during the current health crisis.
January 2020
The start of a New Year and a New Decade – so we’ve decided to have a look at the business and see what tweaks we can do to improve things. We don’t believe in standing still! Just before Christmas our 2 sons were home and helped us extend the wall upwards where we display our certificates and framing examples in our customer area. This has been painted to match the rest of the wall and we will be moving our certificates upwards to give us more space for a few more framing examples. We will also be installing a screen so that we can have a rolling slideshow of completed framing jobs, as well as some step by step photos of framing projects. This is the start of our rebranding project throughout 2020 when we are going to refresh our logo and signs which have served us well since 2006 but will look all the better for a refresh. We are looking forward to seeing the designs that Swiftprint in Dawlish come up with for us. So if we look a little different in 2020, don’t worry. It is still us here, doing all the framing for you all.
We did a significant number of “project” jobs in 2019 and if you’d like to see some of those, or what we are up to in 2020, then don’t forget to follow us on Facebook or Instagram @theframinglot for all our latest news. We regularly feature the work we are doing on our social media feeds, as well as making any announcements about opening hours or special offers. And if you’d like us to feature your finished piece in your home then just snap a photo of it and share it with us on Facebook or Instagram, or you can email it to us at enquiries@theframinglot.co.uk. We look forward to seeing you soon.